By Eric Moen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Akrometrix The electronics assembly industry is being challenged with materials, components and assemblies that are more prone to warpage-induced defects both pre-reflow and in-between reflow stages. The majority of traditional warpage and deformation testing has taken place in a controlled environment ...

By Jonas Diekmann, Technical Editor, HARTING ElectronicsTransformers play a major role in today's Ethernet communications technology; without them, broadband data transfer with high signal integrity would be nearly impossible. Typically, network devices and cabling sections have to be galvanically isolated from each other in order to protect ...

By Vitor Barros, General Manager, KIC EuropeSome companies may find the change to Industry 4.0 overwhelming, though it is one of the most exciting developments in the manufacturing industry in decades. It promises vast improvements for both manufacturers and their customers.

By Patrick McGoff, Valor Product Manager, Mentor — A Siemens BusinessDesign for manufacturing (DFM) software for printed circuit boards has been around since the mid-1990s. It began with bareboard fabricators who wanted to make sure that they fully understood the design they received, in order to avoid any manufacturing issues. When PCB designers got ...

By Berenice Mengo, Online Marketing Specialist, VKSOperating in a high-mix, low-volume environment, effectively navigating the manufacturing process can be complex and difficult. But there are reliable solutions to help steer manufacturers toward the most efficient processes. One of these is the company Visual Knowledge Share (VKS) ...

By Dr. Bill Cardoso, President, Creative Electron, Inc.BGA technology is touted as the ideal interconnect solution because it uses solder balls as leads to provide a reasonable level of self-alignment. That means that there is some tolerance in the placement accuracy, which is a direct function of the size and density of the BGA.

By Klaus Schoeke, VP of Technical Sales, FEIG ElectronicsFrom trains and warehouses to hospitals and libraries, RFID systems are delivering greater efficiency, security and productivity to workplaces around the world. With the growing popularity of products and solutions that offer the convenient connectivity made possible by the Internet ...

By Jenny Yuh, Marketing Assistant, Koh Young TechnologyKoh Young Technology, one of the fastest-growing 3D inspection systems providers worldwide, recently delivered its 10,000th inspection system, a Zenith AOI machine, to a large Chinese automotive supplier. The Zenith system is designed to measure the true profilometric shape of components ...

By Michael Skinner, Associate EditorFrom every corner of the electronics manufacturing industry we are hearing about the Internet of Manufacturing (IoM) or one of its various appellations, including Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). This trend is changing rows of discrete machines into efficient ...

By Laurie Gibbons, Business Development Manager, PermabondHeat, vibration, moisture, and dust can all wreak havoc in electrical systems. With the miniaturization of components, heat or thermal management becomes an even more critical factor in the design process. Managing heat in processing, heat dissipation, and thermal expansion and contraction ...

By Can La, Product Manager, Techcon SystemsUp until roughly five years ago, operators of manual and automated dispensing lines had little ability to achieve highly-accurate, consistent application of adhesives, epoxies and other fluids. This was especially difficult for small depositions, when working with viscous materials ...

By Oliver Rovini, Technical Director, Spectrum InstrumentationSpectrum Instrumentation has added an option, M4i.22xx-ir40m, to its successful, high-speed 22xx series of digitizer products that increases their sensitivity and absolute resolution for low amplitude signals in the ±40 mV up to ±0.5V range. The current products are optimized ...

By Frank Moeller and Stefan Vorndran, PI (Physik Instrumente)Piezoelectric transducers are based on electro-ceramic materials that convert mechanical power into electrical power and vice versa. There are two effects. First, when a force is applied, an electric charge is generated (direct piezo effect). Then, when an electric field is applied ...

Go Beyond the Transaction - Understand the Journey.

In this high speed and highly connected world, organizations across the board, from small to global enterprise, are thinking about the Customer Experience (Cx) and what happens to it in this digital world. Hardly anyone thinks of the Customer Experience as someone else's problem within a company, or isolated to the "Customer Service Department". Those days are long gone. Today the Cx is everyone's responsibility and must be considered a true "journey" that is affected by every stage of your value chain, and contemplated in every phase of product, service or new business model design and development. We believe it simply can't be an afterthought or just one person's/group's job. Here are some staggering statistics on the importance of the Cx to the "C" suite, from a variety of analyst firms and consulting firms:

By David Brehmer, Technical Writer, ExatronWhether testing one device or millions, the ultimate goals of any thermal testing operation are efficiency, accuracy, and stability. Thermal forcing, clamping, and calibration methods are all variables, but the one common denominator in all test scenarios is the socket. Exatron's new ...

By Philip Ling The JTAG standard, first established by the IEEE 27 years ago, defines an electrical and physical method for connecting JTAG-enabled devices on a PCB, or across multiple PCBs. However, JTAG is not a general-purpose bus. The technology behind the interface differs significantly from ...

By Ed SullivanMicrofabrication operations such as metal lift-off, stripping, etching, plating/coating, cleaning, and die-bonding are typically wet processing procedures. Yet, selecting the equipment to perform those procedures most efficiently and cost-effectively is often not a simple matter. In ...

By Neil Hubble, Director of Engineering, AkrometrixFlip chip packages are seldom perfectly co-planar; instead, there exists an angle between the die and package substrate, which becomes a critical factor in maintaining product yield and reliability. Point-to-point height measuring quality checks for die tilt can be time-consuming, and ...

By Craig Hillman Ph.D., CEO, DfR SolutionsCopper has inherently higher electrical and thermal conductivity than SnPb or SnAg/SnAgCu solders, by a factor of about 25. Higher conductivities reduce current density and temperature within the interconnect, which are the primary drivers for matter flow and electromigration (EM) failures ...